Bullshit! Get your hot-buttered patriarchal bullshit!

[ladydreamtime]

Would you mind giving me the names of the "several people" spouting this alpha-male nonsense, so I know to never date them?

Comments

[arabwel]

Do you read Finnish? cause this has been a MASSIVE ton of stupid-ass BS spouted in the FInnish blogosphere about "Lovwer level men" and how lack of sex is a masculinist issue and so on and so on and so on - including the polyamory angle. I have not followed it very closely but it is perfectly understandable that he'd want to get a more international opinion on the issue.

I've known

[lilairen]

For the 'grains of truth', I recommend Figleaf's "no-sex class" posts, which talk about the vast cultural edifices built around the idea that women have no interest in sexual interaction, which means that all sexual motivation is generated by men.

If only men are interested in sexual interactions, or if this is assumed to be a reasonable approximation of the case, then obviously only men will be interested in multiple relationships, right? And therefore women will be monogamous and men will collect all the women they can afford! (Because that's what women want instead of sex in this system: money to buy shiny baubles with.)

That's the underlying set of assumptions in play.

[sxxk1ttn]

what's that saying about assholes and opinions again?

i don't need to keep an open mind about someone trying to tell me they are in possession of a magical self-cleaning, self-lubricating asshole, or sell me their specially marketed brand of shit.

[scien]

'there are probably some grains of truth in there which are making it so attractive to people'

Why do you think this? People can hold all kinds of opinions that are just straightforwardly incorrect, and/or bigoted.

You may disagree that this theory falls into those categories, but I think assuming from the start that there must be grains of truth to be gleaned is a bit bzuh. That's not 'keeping an open mind', that's automatically giving some credence to the claim.

I suspect the only 'grain of truth' to be learned is that some people are really into their sexist stereotypes. Which... is not really news :P

[xuenay]

Why do you think this? People can hold all kinds of opinions that are just straightforwardly incorrect, and/or bigoted.

Sure, and if the theory was popular but obviously complete nonsense I wouldn't bother with it. But parts of it seem plausible, and backed up actual data.

At this point, I should probably clarify what exactly the theory says. It's known as "market value theory" (markkina-arvoteoria in Finnish), and as far as I've understood it, it claims that both men and women can be assigned a "market value" which strongly influences a person's success in dating. A person's market value is composed of things like their wealth, physical attractiveness and so forth. The theory claims that people will mostly mate with partners of a roughly equivalent market value, although the higher your market value, the more people will want to grab you as a partner. There are also some gender-specific assumptions: for instance, that a high wealth increases the market value of men in the eyes of women but not vice versa, and that women are less

[xuenay]

and the correlation between a woman's wealth and their amount of sex partners

That should read: "and the correlation between a woman's wealth and their amount of sex partners being smaller".

I ought to get a paid account so I could edit my comments...

[taldragon]

a. pseudo-science ftl.
b. _snark_ community
c. for a theory you alledgedly dont believe, you're spending a lot of time defending it.

[xuenay]

c: I like to defend ideas I'm to some degree ambivalent over. That helps me hear the strongest arguments for and against it. And like I said, it has some merit / grains of truth, even if the most extreme version of it isn't true.

[taldragon]

such as? (cite please)

[xuenay]

(part 1

[xuenay]

(part 2

[xuenay]

Almost missed this reference:

Miller & Fiskin (1997) On the dynamics of human bonding and reproductive success: Seeking windows on the adapted-for human-environmental interface. In J. Simposn and D. Kenrick (eds.) Evolutionary social psychology. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. 197-235.

[tisiphone]

The polyamory connection, which I've managed to get straighter in my head after making my original post, is basically that (according to the theory) currently some people are forced to accept lower-value partners, since the high-value people all quickly end up taken. The market value theorists fear that if polyamory were widespread, then the high-value individuals would gather all the mates, leaving the low-value ones without a chance for a relationship.I'm going to ignore the fact that this is a vile perversion of my field of study for a moment, and discuss this like it was some kind of reasonable economic theory

[tisiphone]

They are, when the assumption is polygyny.

We're not talking about polygyny, we're talking about polyamory.

0.5% of males (lets call these alpha-males) "use up" as many sex partners as the 39% of males, who noly report of having 1 male.

First, let's not. The "alpha male" thing applied to humans is pure bullshit. Second, what do you mean "use up" a sex partner? Do you mean that some men have more sex partners than others? That's self-evident. Do you mean that some men have 80 concurrent and exclusive sex partners while others have only one? That's blatantly false.

For some reason females prefer have sex date with a high valued male even for shorter periods of time / one-night stands, rather than be satisfied with a low value male.

Cite.

There's also the concept of serial monogamy for high valued males.

People of all types in a monogamous society engage in serial monogamy. Serial monogamy also implies 1:1 pairings, meaning that no more than one partner is being taken up, even if they are contiguous.

One interesting thing to

[vintage_fish]

Quick thought re: women dating unemployed males - it really depends upon the reason the male is or chooses to be unemployed, no? I, for one, am content with an unemployed partner taking on a "housewife" (for lack of a better word) role, regardless of gender. It's only the willfully/harmfully lazy unmotivated people that would fail to win my interest - not their employment status, but often the two go hand-in-hand, it seems. Just a thought.